Over the past decade, the Internet has become a larger and larger part of people's daily lives. Individuals now use the Internet for activities ranging from consumer shopping to business management to general leisure activities. In performing these activities, individuals use a variety of different web browsers to display information from remote sites.
Currently, when a user accesses a remote web page using a web browser, the web browser begins to display the web page before all of the page's content has loaded by the user's device. For example, the web browser may display some text before associated graphics have arrived. However, this creates an issue in correctly displaying the entire web page while the loading process is in process. If, during the loading process, a user scrolls the view into the middle of a web page that is still being downloaded, the viewed location will have a tendency to “jump” during the loading process when additional material is downloaded above or before the view location. For example, if a large image whose size is not set in the HTML or XML mark-up arrives at the user's device for display near the upper left corner of the page while the user is viewing text at the center of the page, the locations of already-rendered page elements are forced to change. In a worst case scenario, the material that the user is reading will literally be forced off of the display by the newly loaded material.
In the case of desktop computers and similar devices, the browsing issue discussed above may not be particularly problematic because the displays on such devices are large. Furthermore, when a device has a broadband, ISDN, or similar high-speed connection, the document layout will quickly “freeze” due to the web page being loaded very quickly. However, mobile electronic devices, less efficient computers, and computers using a modem connection do not typically possess these benefits. The displays on such devices are usually quite small, and the connection speed is relatively slow. Furthermore, the processors on such devices are often not nearly as powerful as those on desktop and laptop computers. As a result of all of these factors, the relatively long period of time required to obtain all of the images on a page results in significant jumping of the view, and this jumping can occur for a relatively long period of time after the first page content is initially displayed.